The invention generally relates to zerotree encoding of wavelet data, such as zerotree encoding of wavelet coefficients, for example.
Data compression typically removes redundant information from a set of data to produce another set of data having a smaller size. This smaller size may be beneficial, for example, for purposes of transmitting the data over a bus or network.
For example, the pixel intensities of an image may be indicated by a set of coefficients, and these coefficients may be represented by digital image data. For purposes of compressing the image data, the data may be transformed to reveal redundant information, i.e., information may be removed via data compression. For example, the image data may be transformed pursuant to a wavelet transformation, a transformation that effectively decomposes the image into spatially filtered images called frequency subbands. In this manner, the subbands may reveal a significant amount of redundant information that may be removed by compression techniques.
Referring to FIG. 1, as an example, image data that indicates pixel intensities of an image 12 may undergo wavelet transformations to decompose the image 12 into subbands. Due to the nature of the transformations, the subbands appear in different decomposition levels (levels 14, 16 and 18, as examples). In this manner, to decompose the original image 12 into subbands 14a, 14b, 14c and 14d of the first decomposition level 14, the one dimensional Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is applied row-wise and then column-wise. In one dimensional DWT, the signal (say a row-wise) is first low-pass filtered and sub-sampled by dropping the alternate filtered output to produce the low-frequency subband (L) which is half the size of the original signal. Then the same signal is high-pass filtered and similarly sub-sampled to produce the high-frequency subband (H) which is half the size of the original signal. When the same one dimensional operation is applied column-wise on the L subband, it produces two subbands LL and LH. Similarly, applying the same one dimensional operation column-wise on the H subband, it produces two subbands HL and HH subbands. As a result after two-dimensional Discrete Wavelet Transform, the original image 12 is decomposed into four subbands: the LL subband 14a, the LH subband 14b, HL subband 14c and HH subband 14d. Sizes of the row and column of each of these subbands is half the sizes of the row and column of the original images due to the sub-sampling operation. The values of these subbands are called the wavelet coefficients and hence the subbands may be represented by an associated matrix of wavelet coefficients.
The LL subband 14a indicates low frequency information in both the horizontal and vertical directions of the image 12 and typically represents a considerable amount of information present in the image 12 because it is nothing but the sub-sampled version of the original image 12. The LH subband 14b indicates low frequency information in the horizontal direction and high frequency information in the vertical direction, i.e., horizontal edge information. The HL subband 14c indicates high frequency information in the horizontal direction and low frequency information in the vertical direction, i.e., vertical edge information. The HH subband 14b indicates high frequency information in the horizontal direction and high frequency information in the vertical direction, i.e., diagonal edge information.
Since LL subband 14a is nothing but the sub-sampled version of the original image, it maintains the spatial characteristics of the original image. As a result, the same DWT decomposition can be further applied to produce four subbands that have half the resolution of the LL subband 14a in both the vertical and horizontal directions: the LL subband 16a, LH subband 16b, HL subband 16c and HH subband 16d. Hence the LL subband 16a is again the sub-sampled version of the LL subband 14a. Hence LL subband 16a can be further decomposed to four subbands that have half of its resolution in both horizontal and vertical directions: LL subband 18a, LH subband 18b, HL subband 18c and HH subband 18d. 
The subbands of the lower decomposition levels indicate the information that is present in the original image 12 in finer detail (i.e., the subbands indicate a higher resolution version of the image 12) than the corresponding subbands of the higher decomposition levels. For example, the HH subband 18d (the parent of the HH subband 16d) indicates the information that is present in the original image 12 in coarser detail than the HH subband 16d (the child of the HH subband 18d), and the HH subband image 14d (another descendant of the HH subband 18d) indicates the information that is present in the original image 12 in finer detail than the HH 16d and 18d subbands. In this manner, a pixel location 24 of the HH subband image 18d corresponds to four pixel locations 22 of the HH subband 16d and sixteen pixel locations 20 of the HH subband 14d. 
Due to the relationship of the pixel locations between the parent subband and its descendants, a technique called zerotree coding may be used to identify wavelet coefficients called zerotree roots. In general, a zerotree root is a wavelet coefficient that satisfies two properties: the coefficient has an insignificant intensity, and all of the descendants of the coefficient have insignificant intensities with respect to a certain threshold. Thus, due to this relationship, a chain of insignificant coefficients may be indicated by a single code, a technique that compresses the size of the data that indicates the original image. As an example, if the wavelet coefficient for the location 24 is a zerotree root, then the wavelet coefficients for the locations 20, 22 and 24 are insignificant and may be denoted by a single code.
The coding of each decomposition level typically includes two passes: a dominant pass to determine a dominant list of wavelet coefficients that have not been evaluated for significance and a subordinate pass to determine a subordinate list of wavelet coefficients that have been determined to be significant. During the subordinate pass, a threshold may be calculated for each subband and used to evaluate whether coefficients of the subband are insignificant or significant. Unfortunately, due to the computational complexity, the above-described compression technique may be too slow for some applications, such as an interactive video compression application, for example.
Thus, there is a continuing need for an arrangement that addresses one or more of the above-stated problems.